Palin to NRA: 'If You Control Arms, You Control the People'

Sarah Palin rallied the faithful at the National Rifle Association's convention on Saturday, saying that they are "needed now more than ever because every day, we are seeing more and more efforts to strip away our Second Amendment rights."

"They are trying, though. You know who 'they' are?" she asked the 13,000 attendees at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, referring to the Obama administration. "If you control oil, you control an economy. If you control money, you control commerce.

"But if you control arms, you control the people," she added. "And that is what they're trying to do."

Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, opened the NRA's "Stand and Fight Rally" at the annual meeting, which began Friday.

Retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North also spoke — and the crowd was entertained by country singer Sara Evans and the Grammy-winning legendary group Alabama.

On Sunday, the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the renowned evangelist Billy Graham, will be they keynote speaker at the association's prayer breakfast.

In her 12-minute speech, Palin blasted everyone from President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to Attorney General Eric Holder and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. She charged that the administration's attack on the Second Amendment was also an assault on the nation's "foundational values and tradition.

"They are not right when they preach tolerance and free speech," Palin said. "So when a kid at school is cursing away like any character in any [Quentin] Tarantino movie, no one bats an eye. But when a kid says a prayer in school, these hypocrites lose their minds.

"They are not right," she continued, referring to Obama's foreign policy efforts that "poke our allies in the eye, calling them adversaries, instead of putting the fear of God in our enemies. Enemies who would annihilate America. … But you can't offend them. Can't make them uncomfortable.

"Well, if I were in charge," Palin added, pausing for sustained applause from the audience, "they would know that waterboarding is the way we baptize terrorists."

She also slammed Biden's suggestion last year his wife, Jill, fire two warning shots in the air to ward off an intruder, referring to the vice president as "Joe Squirt Gun."

"That's fine … if your rapist is a bird," Palin said, triggering laughs from the attendees. "Gals, you know, nowadays, ammo is expensive. Don't waste a bullet on a warning shot."

She further illustrated her disdain by discussing the three bracelets she wears daily. The first one says "don't tread on me," a motto that has tea party associations.

"That's to honor you, all of you with the clear thinking, and the heart and the guts to stand up and fight for what is right," Palin told the crowd. "Because they don't know what is right."

Her second bracelet honors a "gold star" soldier who died in Afghanistan. Palin did not name the solider, saying only that his name was given to her by his widow.

"A true hero. He and his family paid the ultimate price for our freedom — and I'll never forget, nor ever disrespect, our finest with slashed numbers and benefits and budgets," she said, referring to recent efforts to slash benefits to veterans and drastically scale back the nation's armed forces. "And Mr. Obama, for shame. Is this how you thank them?

"Friends, they have protected our freedom. We honor those who have served and serve. And we so honor those who will never feel their homeland beneath their feet again. And we salute those gold-star families."

Palin's last bracelet, she said, "celebrates 1791," the year the Bill of Rights was ratified, making the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution law and completing the process begun with the Declaration of Independence.

"That's why we're here: to affirm that solid oath to liberty," she said. "To celebrate family and faith and freedom, knowing that God shed his grace on thee, America.

"So stand and fight for her, for her children's future, for freedom.

"And, buddy," she warned, in another reference to Holder, "you can have these bracelets when you pry them past my cold, dead hands."

Sarah Palin rallied the faithful at the National Rifle Association's convention on Saturday, saying that they are needed now more than ever because every day, we are seeing more and more efforts to strip away our Second Amendment rights.